Method and system for determining an efficient vehicle path

Abstract

A system and method for determining a path plan for a vehicle includes organizing a work area into partition areas based on at least one of an obstacle, a concavity, and an exclusion area associated with a work area. An external cost indicator is established for indicating the economic cost corresponding to the vehicle traversing from one partition area to another partition area for each possible permutation or potential combination of successive partition areas. The established external cost indicators are searched to determine a preferential order of traversing the partition areas. A preferential path plan is determined based on the internal path plan of each partition and a transfer path plan of transferring from a prior partition to a latter partition until each partition in the work area is traversed.

Description

[0001]This application is a continuation-in-part of U.S. application Ser. No. 10 / 403,681, entitled, A PATH PLANNER AND A METHOD FOR PLANNING A PATH OF A WORK VEHICLE, filed Mar. 31, 2003 (pending), and this application is entitled to the benefit of the foregoing prior application under 35 U.S.C. 120.FIELD OF THE INVENTION[0002]This invention relates to a method and system for determining an efficient vehicle path.BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0003]An operator of a work vehicle may be exposed to chemicals, fertilizers, herbicides, insecticides, dust, allergens, exhaust fumes, environmental conditions, slopes, low-hanging branches, and other hazards or conditions that might be harmful or irritating to the operator. The work vehicle may perform a task or other work that involves traversing at least part of a work area in one or more rows. An operator may not be able to achieve precise row alignment of adjacent rows because of the limited perspective of a human operator from a work vehicl...

AI Technical Summary

Problems solved by technology

An operator of a work vehicle may be exposed to chemicals, fertilizers, herbicides, insecticides, dust, allergens, exhaust fumes, environmental conditions, slopes, low-hanging branches, and other hazards or conditions that might be harmful or irritating to the operator.

An operator may not be able to achieve precise row alignment of adjacent rows because of the limited perspective of a human operator from a work vehicle or other factors.

The misalignment of rows may lead to excessive or inconsistent row overlap between adjacent rows, wasted fuel, and wasted time in performing a task.

Where the work area comprises vegetation (e.g., grass) to be mowed or processed, misalignment of rows may produce a poor aesthetic appearance of the mowed or processed vegetation.

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